


Homework

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Antisemitism, Nazi Germany, Period-Typical Racism, Quotes from Nazi Propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: Jojo briefly reflects on his antisemitic education.
Relationships: Jojo Betzler & Elsa Korr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Homework

Jojo often found himself paging through his worn school-issued arithmetic textbook. Fraulein Rahm had sent one of his classmates to bring it around while he was first recovering, but Jojo had been too ashamed of his deformed appearance to answer the door. He didn’t want any of his schoolmates to see the monster he had become. Especially if they were in the _Deutsches Jungvolk_ , because that meant they would inevitably tell the older boys in the Hitler Youth. Then everyone would know that not only had Johannes Betzler blown himself up, he hadn’t even had the dignity to die of humiliation afterward.

Jojo hid away while his mother accepted the book in his stead.

Now, if Captain K. had no work for him to do, there was little else to do but to fill in the answers to questions of multiplication and decimals and percents. Continuing to do schoolwork was a good reminder, Jojo thought, of all the tasks he needed to still perform, even if he was a cripple with an ugly, scarred face and nothing to live for. He returned to his bedroom to fetch it. His room used to be an oasis of all the things he held dear, but now only reminded him of what he could never have. Here he had his brand new gas mask, his neatly made bed, his posters idolizing Germany’s intelligent, mustached _Führer._ His room was clinical and bare, more like military barracks than a child’s bedroom. That was exactly how Jojo liked it. Since the age of seven, his toy chest was pushed to the far back of his closet. Hitler would want a good, hardened soldier to guard him from enemies—not frightened little boys who still played with stuffed animals.

Alongside his arithmetic textbook, he had all the classics on his bookshelf— _Never Trust a Fox on the Green Heath and Never Trust a Jew by His Oath_ , _The Poisonous Mushroom_ , et cetera. Jojo was too old for picture books, but he hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of them yet. They made him a bit sentimental.

He limped slowly over to his shelf and took _Never Trust a Fox on the Green Heath_ from it. When he flipped through the pages and looked at the pictures of the sly, evil Jew, with his large hooked nose and dark scruffy hair, Jojo was reminded of the girl hiding in Inge’s bedroom. Elsa might look like one of the members of the League of German Girls, but really she was one of Them, he told himself, eyeing the illustration darkly. She was in league with the devil. She was a liar and a swindler, a monster that hid beneath white Aryan skin.

Jojo flipped through the book until he reached one of the last pages. He touched the illustration, which featured proud Hitler Youths with cheerful red-lipped smiles and uniform yellow hair. His heart sank when he read the accompanying prose:

_From smallest to the biggest boy_

_All are husky, tough and strong._

Jojo's face fell. He felt the familiar bitter melancholy wash over him. He wasn’t husky. He wasn’t tough or strong, either. He was skinny, weak, and a cripple, besides—no longer an example of Aryan excellence. He bit his lip and tried to shake off the despair. It accosted him often, a big rain-heavy cloud bearing down on his brain. It made itself known when he first woke up from the surgeries, when he ate his meager rations, when he looked at his gas mask and the picture of the _Führer_ on his wall...almost all the time.

Jojo quickly turned the page. He didn’t want to be reminded of his new inferiority. He warded off the big raincloud in his head like he used to with Inge’s diabetes—by ignoring it.

The next illustration was of all the Jews in Germany—ugly, olive-skinned people with stumpy limbs, thick lips, and lumpy potato noses—shuffling away in a single-file line. 

Jojo read the words accompanying the picture and felt a sudden surge of curiosity. He hadn't thought about it before, but then again, he hadn't had his very own Jew to ask before. The page said, in perfunctory rhyme:

_In the far-off South is the country_

_Which cradled Jewish ancestry. Let them go back there with wife and child_

_As quickly as they came! What a disgusting picture_

_Is shown by these Jews, so dirty and wild._

Elsa’s family was probably there, in the far-off South, Jojo thought. Why didn’t she want to join them? He couldn’t imagine leaving his mother behind in the same situation.

It didn’t make sense. If anything, the Nazis were helping the Jews, Jojo reasoned as he put the book back on his shelf. They were helping them go back to their homeland.

He took his textbook with him to Inga’s bedroom and knocked on Elsa’s wall. 

“What do you want?” she asked when she cracked open the door and peered out. There was dust in the wisps of hair that fell over her face, and dirt on her chin, but Jojo decided not to tell her. It’s not like she could take a bath, after all. “Are you working on your book?”

“Not today,” he replied. “I’m doing schoolwork.”

“Oh. Goodbye, then.”

“Wait!” Jojo held up a pad of paper and pencil. “Here. Draw me more Jews.” He hesitated, then added, “Like the one you drew before. The...cave Jew.”

Elsa opened her door a little more and slipped out. She was hunched over at first, making Jojo feel a twinge of recognition—her posture was just like the picture of the slope-shouldered Jew in _Never Trust a Fox on the Green Heath_. Then, gradually, she stood straight up and began to stretch. She only stood like that because his mother had put her in the crawlspace, Jojo reminded himself.

He studied Elsa’s nose as she warmed her cramped muscles. _The Jewish nose is bent at its tip,_ he thought automatically. _It looks like the number six_. How often had he heard that from Fraulein Rahm in her characteristic bullish singsong? Elsa had such a nose, but it didn’t look nearly as big or grotesque as the pictures in the books he’d grown up on. It looked just as normal as the noses of his classmates, really. 

Jojo could almost see Elsa’s ribs even through the fabric of her clothes, she was so skinny. He averted his gaze. He thought about asking her about her family, but she had already told him that they were off-limits. So, he kept his mouth shut and opened his textbook.

They worked for a few moments in studious silence. Jojo answered arithmetic problems while Elsa carefully sketched.

One math problem read:

_The Jews are aliens in Germany. In 1933, there were 66,000,000 people living in Germany. Of this total, 499,862 were Jewish. What is the percentage of aliens in Germany?_

Jojo didn’t know. Calculating percentages had always stumped him, and this was a tricky one. He wondered if he could possibly get extra credit by pointing out that there almost certainly were no more Jewish aliens in Germany anymore, as the textbook he was using was practically as old as he was.

Elsa tapped him on the arm. Jojo looked up at her sketch. It was of a being that looked like something from a fable—a puckish elf, or a beautiful fairy. The being had thick, curly hair that fanned out around its lithe, long-limbed body. It had a long, elegant nose that curved slightly downward, as if driven by the gentlest form of gravity. Its eyes were mere dots and its mouth was a sweeping pencil stroke. The figure didn’t quite look happy or sad; rather, it looked like it was pondering things beyond the earth.

Elsa’s eyes were bright, but only the twitching corners of her mouth truly betrayed her joy at practicing her craft again. “What do you think?” she asked.

“It’s good,” said Jojo stiffly. He suddenly felt very awkward. He looked at his textbook page and then back at the sketch. He closed his book. It wouldn’t be good for Elsa to see the problems he was working on, he figured—it might make her miss her family in the South, or wherever they were. “It looks like you.”

Elsa looked at her sketch and smiled. “It will look better when I color it with the colored pencils you gave me. I’ll go get them.” She turned and began to make her way back into her crawlspace.

Jojo took his textbook in his hands. “You do that,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’ll be right back.”

He ran back to his bedroom and put his textbook on his bed. 

He could do his homework later.

**Author's Note:**

> Chillingly, all the quotations cited in this fic are real examples of Nazi propaganda oriented toward children in the twenties and thirties. Here are my sources:
> 
> https://www.somethingawful.com/news/never-trust-fox/
> 
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-nazi-normalized-anti-semitism-appealing-children-180959539/
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_propaganda_in_Nazi_Germany
> 
> Reviews/feedback are welcome!


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